With light rain appearing throughout the session, it was difficult for the riders to determine how wet and slippery the circuit was. Casey went to the top of the timing sheets early on in the session with team mate Dani Pedrosa just behind him in second.

After the brief rain showers disappeared, lap times once again started to improve and with under ten minutes of the session remaining, Casey on a fresh rear soft tyre recorded his fastest lap of 1’31.861 which remained unbeaten for the remainder of the session with Dani Pedrosa closely behind in second position with a 1’32.875 lap. Unfortunately, on his final lap of the session, Repsol Honda‘s Andrea Dovizioso suffered an accident in turn four and finished in 8th position. He visited the circuit medical centre and was released without any serious injury, just a dislocated and heavily bruised left thumb.

Casey Stoner:

“Of course I’m really happy with pole position today, I’m still hungry to win and get pole positions, after all this is why I line up to go racing, winning the Championship is the bonus at the end of the season, but I still try my best in every session and every race. I took some less risks yesterday in the wet as I didn’t feel we were making any progress in the conditions. Today was also difficult, there was a little rain in all the sessions, this morning there were some wet patches on the track and it was hard to know where to push, then the same this afternoon with some rain on the track, you’re never 100% sure how far you can push. We felt comfortable though and the feeling in the bike was pretty good, with a similar set up to the test we had here last year and we put in a good lap. Now we’ll have to see what the weather does tomorrow and take it from there, but we remain confident”.